The New Films staff strive to create a fun and welcoming environment for all users. This forum is a place for discussing the films, which means that you think the films are worth discussing. Constructive criticism (as deemed by the moderating staff) is welcome and encouraged. Bashing of any kind will not be tolerated anywhere outside The Sanctuary thread. See the new rules thread here. Bans can and will be handed out to anyone who doesn't abide by the forum rules.

From the spoilers I've read, I think the Knights of Ren are Luke's former students who went with Kylo. So yes I think that means this is who will run the New Empire with Kylo and Rey will have to fight them all in 9. Maybe Rey will have an apprentice?

I think its essential for them to be in IX they can't be brought up in VII to not hold a deeper role, have the rivalry and now intense personal conflict with Rey and Kylo at the centre of the story with the Knights possibly being the main foe for the Resistance?

I think that they will be. They weren't in VIII because there was no time, really. It takes place over the course of a few days, straight after TFA, during which time Kylo is really ****ing busy trying to get Rey and figure out why he's so **** at his job.

IX will inevitably have a time jump. Supreme Leader Ren will have been ruling for a while, with his Knights at his side.

So many question around them :
- Why did they betray Luke too follow Kylo in the first place? Were they forced?
- Are they all dead? Alive?
- Where are they during TFA and TLJ?
- Maybe they are the one who find Vader's mask and Anakin's lightsaber? Hence Kylo sentence "This lightsaber, it belongs to me"

Well, I guess there are at least 6 of them. Didn’t Luke say he took a dozen apprentices and Ben took half? And the scene in the vision was an allusion to The Seven Sanurai? So, if none died, 6–unless they’ve recruited. And they must be Force Sensitive.

“I gotta say Kathy Kennedy, who’s running it all, she seems to be pushing all the right buttons. There isn’t something that I’d love to see—I guess the one thing I would say is there’s a Knights of Ren story that I think would be pretty cool to tell.”

I think it's a great idea to make them Luke's former students who left with Kylo. Not only does it explain what happened to them, it makes sense; if they left with him, they must be his Force-sensitive allies. And now that his plans for galactic domination have come to fruition, I see them ruling with him the way Kylo tried to tempt Rey to rule with him.

In fact, I wonder if that was the crux of his offer to her: To become a Knight of Ren.

It all bodes well for them being cast with real actors and given real personalities/story arcs, as opposed to just being canon fodder like the Praetorian guards.

If the Knights of Ren are still alive, it would be good to see them in Episode IX. With several significant characters gone, they would make a good addition to Kylo Ren's court. This seems more likely now that JJ Abrams is at the helm of this film, since he had previously expressed an interest in having the story of the Knights of Ren further explored; and TLJ could have set them up as the "handful" of students that Ben took with him after his destruction of the temple.

That said, they could also simply be dead, with Snoke's usage of "Master of the Knights of Ren" meaning something closer to the best of them and only surviving member rather than a leader of a gang. It seems like their role may be limited to the pre-TFA period and Kylo's formative years in the First Order, since that scene from Rey's Force vision in TFA appears to be from a past raid by the Knights in their attempts to find the Skywalker lightsaber. But then that's not the full explanation either, since we were told that Kylo's mask was based on the battle gear of the Knights of Ren, which makes it sound like the group precedes his (and Luke's other students') defection in some form.

Considering how the First Order tends to operate, I can see the Knights of Ren being an older, historical order that had died out long ago, but one which Kylo and his fellow defectors looked up to and decided to "restore" in their search for greater power. This new band may have been an attempt by Snoke to train a larger number of dark siders, perhaps sending them on different missions that ended up winnowing them down to just Kylo Ren, his most gifted apprentice. The others certainly don't seem to have been as advanced in their training as him, considering he was the only one with a lightsaber. Unless they opted for different historical weapons based on preference and a desire to distance themselves from Jedi or Sith.

In any case, I can see how a story about this group would be interesting, especially if set between Bloodline and TFA. It would be a good way of exploring the First Order's introduction to the galaxy, Ben's transformation into Kylo Ren, and give us insight into how Snoke came to corrupt him and make his biggest power play pre-TFA.